


Coming Home

by cthulhuraejepsen



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 22:41:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16752826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhuraejepsen/pseuds/cthulhuraejepsen
Summary: Originally written ages ago as a response to a prompt that was something like "what would you take with you if a portal opened to a fantasy land and you would die if you didn't go through", or something like that. Put a cap on it so that it serves as a short. Edit:This one!





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written ages ago as a response to a prompt that was something like "what would you take with you if a portal opened to a fantasy land and you would die if you didn't go through", or something like that. Put a cap on it so that it serves as a short. Edit: [This one!](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3a66h4/dbst_you_have_2_days_to_prepare_to_transport_to_a/cs9nlzt/)

I almost tried to pay for the mocha with a golden coin, before remembering that wasn’t how things were done on Earth. The DHS had issued me with a matte black card for these occasions. I pulled it from my cloak with a small flourish. The cashier looked like he had no idea what to do with it (or me), but his manager stepped in and pulled a card reader from beneath the counter. I made a mental note to ask how everyone else was paying for things these days. Plastic cards with magnetic strips had apparently become antiquated in my absence.

“His too,” I said, gesturing to my son.

We sat down at a table together, both doing our best to ignore the looks we were getting. I set my golden crown on the glass surface of the tabletop and unlatched my sword from my hip to set it against the side of the partition. There was no scabbard; the sword wouldn’t cut unless I willed it to, and it didn’t like being confined.

“You didn’t have a beard in the pictures,” said Paul.

He was right. Before I went through the portal, I hadn’t been able to grow one. I’d kept myself clean-shaven so that no one would see my pitiful whiskers. Now my facial hair was thick and full, with streaks of white that came down on either side of my chin. There were a thousand other changes, but that one was perhaps the most noticeable, if you’d been comparing pictures of how I looked at twenty-nine and how I looked at fifty. I had crow’s feet, a scar on my ear, and hair that hung down to below my chin. Age had also brought some of the aches and pains of middle age despite the magic that I wielded. All that was a fraction of what separated me from my younger self.

I knew that I looked out of place in the coffee shop. Paul had been the one to ask that we meet in a public place. I hoped it was because he had the same sense of humor as I did. There was something funny about the way I intruded into this world. It would have been easy to buy a suit and blend in, hang my crown and sword at our temporary headquarters, and walk around like I were normal. I had no particular taste for that though, in part because I thought making a scene was amusing. My honor guard was standing outside, keeping the press at a distance. I watched as they gently turned back a bewildered looking college student. Paul and I both pretended that we didn’t notice.

“How’s your mother?” I asked.

“She’s fine,” said Paul. “She said you’d been e-mailing?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Yes, ever since our, ah, reunion, but … her side of it is quite brief. She answers two pages with a single paragraph.”

“You shouldn’t have kissed her,” said Paul. “You shouldn’t have pretended that things would be the same.”

“I know,” I replied. “I had no delusions that we could pick up where we’d left off, but you have to understand that I spent nearly half my life in a land that rewards grand gestures, and I spent every one of those twenty years thinking of her flaxen hair and  — ”

“Ben,” said Paul. That’s not what he should have said though. Even if he didn’t recognize me as a king, he should have at least called me ‘dad’, or maybe ‘father’. I hadn’t been called Ben in a long time.

“I loved her. I still love her. I started a war over her, did you know that? There was a politically expedient marriage that I turned down because I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying another woman.” That was a somewhat grandiloquent way of putting it, but the way of speaking they used on the other side was difficult to drop.

“You told her to move on if you didn’t come back,” said my son. “What did you expect?”

“I expected it would be impossible for her,” I said. “You’re young, perhaps you don’t understand yet. While I wanted her to find happiness in my absence, I also wanted to have left an indelible mark on her immortal soul.”

“You did,” said Paul. “And now that you’re back, you’re hard to ignore.”

“Your sister still doesn’t want to see me?” I asked.

“No,” said Paul.

“She hasn’t been returning my emails.”

“No,” said Paul. He sighed. “If you’d known that it was twins, would that have changed anything?”

“I only went through the portal because I thought that I would die,” I replied. “If not for that premonition, I would have stayed with your mother. Given the choice between death and a chance at life, I chose life, and it wouldn’t have mattered how many unborn children her womb contained.” More grandiloquence, this time as a defense mechanism.

“It was hard for mom,” said Paul. “Really hard. She had help from grandma and grandpa, and from the rest of the family, but it was still hard. Izzy resents you for that, maybe more than mom does.” That was like a stab at my heart. I still hadn’t seen my daughter Isabella in the flesh.

“It was hard for me as well,” I replied. “Surely you’ve been keeping up with the news? I had to grasp a medieval kingdom by its throat and drag it kicking and screaming through an industrial revolution. I brought science and medical technology to them. I formalized an understanding of magic. Even if you argue that I had privileged information that gave me an enormous benefit, I did things that their scholars thought impossible.”

“You were having adventures,” said Paul. “She was raising two kids by herself, on a single income.”

“I understand,” I replied, though I wasn’t sure that was true. There was always a wide gulf between grasping a hypothetical and experiencing reality. “How do I make it better with your mother? What will work with your sister?”

“Mom said you were like this,” said Paul. “Always trying to find a solution to some new problem. She said it used to drive her nuts. All she wanted was empathy, and you were trying to fix things.” He took a swig from his mocha. Did people take swigs in this world? Maybe he only drank from his mocha. “You were this mythological figure in my life. The father who wasn’t there. Izzy  and I dealt with it in different ways. Until I was twelve, I really thought that you were coming back. I read through all your emails. All the stories you’d written. All the letters to mom, or at least the ones that she’d show me. You left this electronic footprint, and every day there seemed to be some part of it that I hadn’t explored. Izzy just pretended that you didn’t exist, which I guess made sense. You didn’t exist, until a few weeks ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because it seemed like the sort of thing that he needed to hear. I still wasn’t good with expressing empathy. If you had a problem, why not fix it? Why was saying sorry and making sympathetic noises better than offering a solution? I suppose the answer was that people weren’t rational creatures, but indulging that irrationality had always been painful for me. “If I’d had a choice … I would have chosen differently.” I paused slightly. “You know, you and your sister are technically royalty, if that’s any consolation.”

“I’d heard,” said Paul. He smiled slightly. “I’m a prince?”

“Yes. There are other titles that I can give you as well, more meaningful ones,” I said. “So long as you can prove yourself. We’re more of a meritocracy than an aristocracy these days, but many of the trappings are still there. There are artifacts too; I can help you pick some out. Open trade between the worlds is going to make these things more common, but I have a fair amount of wealth.” My gleaming sword was leaning against the wall. “Quite a bit of wealth, actually. I’m richer than … is Bill Gates still around?”

“Yeah,” said Paul.

“Is he still rich?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m richer than him. Some of that wealth is non-liquid, and some of it I can’t move without crashing the economy here — the markets are frozen as-is, until we can hammer out a reconciliation — but you and your sister can have whatever you’d like of it, within reason. I can wipe away college debts, buy you houses, whatever you think suits you.” I watched Paul carefully. He had my eyes, blue with flecks of silver. “And if you come through to the other world, I can teach you magic.”

“Yeah?” asked Paul. He seemed to have some eagerness for the first time.

“I had to learn most of it myself,” I replied. “None of it works here, though the magic items still do, thank the gods for that. We had something of a scare the first time through, when we found we couldn’t shoot fireballs. It made negotiations a little bit easier though, from a military standpoint. The governments of Earth would get demolished by our might if they attacked through the portal, and we would have none of our magic if we tried to attack here.” I said this lightly, but I was certain that people were listening, and that some of the bystanders sipping their lattes were government agents. After all, I had my own people disguised among them, with glamours worn around their necks or hidden on a wedding band. The government would have a way to detect these things, in time, but for now we were taking any advantages we could get. There was certainly some humor to be had in going into a coffee shop with a sword and crown visibly displayed, but it was also an act of political theater.

“They’re calling you a dictator,” Paul said.

“Is a king a dictator?” I asked. “That’s a difficult question. I certainly rule in a manner that isn’t compatible with democracy. But as I said, it’s also a meritocracy. Because I came from this world rather than being raised there, I happen to have a significant amount of merit. More than anyone else.”

“Izzy and I talked about it,” said Paul. “We don’t know if you’ve changed or not. Mom thought maybe being the god-emperor of an entire world was what you were always meant to be. She said it as sort of a joke, but … but also not as a joke.”

“She always did have faith in me,” I replied. “Too much, it seems. I should have …” I paused, unsure of what to say. “If I could have stayed. If I could have spent my last day on Earth differently. I loved her. I loved our children to be. But I knew that if I didn’t go through the portal, I would die, and having a dead father here on Earth didn’t seem much better than having a father who disappeared forever under mysterious circumstances, not if there was the smallest chance that I could return. Paul, I reshaped an entire world to get back to you.”

“You reshaped a world,” Paul replied. “But you always said that motivations were difficult things to unpack, that they were layered and complex things that were opaque even -- maybe especially -- when the mind is trying to figure out its own motivations.”

“Yes,” I said. “And perhaps my motivations in becoming divine king were colored by a pure lust for power that a life as a software engineer could never afford me. Perhaps I was only pretending that it was for your mother and you because it made me feel righteous.” That was a bit of bald truth, maybe too much, given who was listening in. “Regardless. I hope that history doesn’t judge me too harshly. The same for my children, and my once-upon-a-time wife.”

“I’ll talk to Izzy,” said Paul. “She’s just … she wanted a father. Mom did what she could, but Izzy would see the other kids’ dads at basketball games, or at nature hikes, and she always had to explain about you. She got made fun of, a few times.”

“By whom?” I asked. “Their names?”

“Ben,” said Paul, shaking his head. “This isn’t something that you can fix by taking action or making a grand gesture. She  _ does _ read the e-mails you send, even if she doesn’t respond. If you want to get in her good graces? Maybe try thinking about what she feels, or talk about your own feelings. I’m not going to promise that it’ll work, but it’s got to be better than what you’ve been doing.”

“I see,” I replied. “Thank you.” I took another drink from my mocha, then looked down on it. “I wonder if they changed the formula. I used to have these all the time on Earth. They were one of the material things I looked forward to most when I returned. It’s not what I remember though.”

“Maybe sometimes things are just different from what we imagine,” said Paul with a shrug. “But I’m glad you’re back, dad.” The word came out awkwardly, but it came out all the same.


End file.
